China and the United States need to be more open in talking to each other about spying activities, former President Bill Clinton said at a forum in Beijing.

The South China Morning Post reported Tuesday that at a forum sponsored by the Chinese business publication Caijing, Clinton said "China and America should commit to tell the whole truth of the listening we are doing to each other."

Clinton said the debate surrounding leaks by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden had caused people to think about how to balance national security with privacy. "I don't think you can do it in a closet anymore," he said.

The former president said the Snowden case led him to believe “that we are on the verge of having the worst of all worlds: we'll have no security and no privacy," the Morning Post said.

At the Caijing forum, Clinton also said he hoped the United States would elect a female president in his lifetime and said his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was “the ablest public servant I have ever worked with."

Following an earlier meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Clinton praised reform resolutions agreed to by a Chinese Communist Party plenum last week.

During the meeting with Clinton, Xi said Washington and Beijing needed to work together to build their relationship and said that relations with Washington had for the most part been moving in the right direction.

But according to a draft report by the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, China continues to engage in a “large-scale cyberespionage campaign against the United States,” the Washington Free Beacon reported earlier this month.

The panel urged the U.S. government to impose sanctions on China “to prompt Beijing to change its approach to cyberspace and deter future Chinese cyber theft,” the draft report said.